Stages: Part 2

Following on from yesterday’s post on Nike’s Stages project, here’s a bit more of an in depth look at some of the work on show. Today we’ll be looking at the contributions from some of the biggest names out there including Shepard Fairey, KAWS, Yoshimoto Nara, and even a little chat with José Parlá.

Shepard Fairey is an someone we’re obviously all familiar with, his Obama poster earlier this year cemented his name in the upper echelons of contemporary culture, if his OBEY series hadn’t already. His piece for Stages is classic Fairey, introducing the depth we’ve come to recognise through stencil and collage. It’s entitled Jessica, in honour of his friend Jessica Ikenberry, who, in her early 20s was diagnosed with breast cancer. There’s also a great video of him making the piece here.

As you pass Fairey’s piece and move into the second room you are welcomed by, among others a piece by Yoshimoto Nara. I remember seeing an extensive show of Yoshimoto’s work at the Baltic in Gateshead last year, and have been hooked ever since. You’ll know the work from the prolificacy of his output – appearing on clothes, toys, clocks as well as on the walls of the most highly regarded galleries in the world. His painting Fire depicts a classic Nara composition – a figure with an accessory, to illustrate a point or feeling, making him a perfect candidate to for inclusion in Stages.

Next we move onto KAWS’ canvas in the following room. With it’s uashamed vibrance and vigour, to describe his piece as simply flat artwork doesn’t do it justice. The End stands up and shouts at you, revealing a glimpse of the classic KAWS signature of X’s for eyes. The yellow paint laced between the other blocks of colour signal a nod to the famous Livestrong hue and for someone as influential as KAWS making work for a cause like this can only be applauded.

Finally for today we come to José Parlá and his canvas Untitled (Dedicated to Dr. Alan Berkman). José was present at the gallery to open up about his piece and it didn’t take long for you to realise how close to home the subject of the exhibition was to him. Usually taking inspiration from urban environments and textures, he shifted this a little to draw his inspiration for those who’ve struggled with the disease. His piece is made up of a layered script of the names of suffers, including some friends and family – all joining to create “one big signature”. When chatting to José while looking around, the sincerity in his piece rings true with the man himself. He believes that “Art is for everyone” and sees each new piece as a chance to challenge and experiment with new materials and ideas, whatever the brief or cause. His final words to me on what makes a good piece of work were also very poignant, and something that I thought summed the show up perfectly – “When there’s relevance, it’s beautiful”.

We’ve been extolling the virtues of graphic designer Sean Freeman since way back in 2008 when some of you were likely still in short trousers and I was at university saying pretentious things about poems I’d half-cribbed from York Notes. In all that time our love for his work hasn’t faded, and while seven years ago we were content to devote just 11 words to Sean, today we’ll dedicate a few more to him to bring you some great recent work.

“It’s a funny thing actually,” Tony Brook tells me, pointing to a series of three posters which have been reprinted especially for design studio Spin’s new exhibition, which opens today. “I was saying this morning to the guys who were putting the show up, when we first made those posters they all just went. 125, bang! Immediately! And we thought that was what would happen every time, because we’d never made anything before. We were disabused of that illusion fairly quickly.”

Spanish studio Clase bcn was tasked with creating the promotional material for The Palau de la Música Catalana’s 2015-2016 season and the result is a playful but refined identity. Encompassing the building’s grandeur, huge banners line the corridors of the concert hall, showcasing the events and people appearing at the Palau, tying them together with a border of lush colours to echo the hall’s eclectic programme. Made up of fragmented shapes the boarder has been translated wonderfully into the other areas of the identity, appearing in milky-coloured pamphlets and a sturdy book.

Annual reports aren’t the most exciting sounding of entities, but in the right hands, they can certainly become beautiful. Take Manchester agency Music’s designs for the British Fashion Council’s 2014/15 annual review. With an all-black cover, gorgeous imagery and bold typography, you’d do well to tell it apart from a slick coffee table tome. The book showcases the BFC’s “five strategic pillars”, according to Music; Business, Education, Innovation & Digital, Investment and Reputation, with imagery from events including London Fashion Week, the British Fashion Awards and London Collections Men.

It goes without saying that we receive more information from screens than we do from paper. But posters are such a superb platform for graphic design experimentation that they seem unlikely to become obsolete. Instead, they’re adapting, and a wonderful example of that shapeshifting is in the smart moving posters of agency Wonder Room. The man behind them is Steve Hockett, who made them in response to seeing his poster designs diluted for online platforms.

You know what we’re like, always going all gaga over pretty colours and GIFS like little typing magpies. But we’re not all about a pretty picture over here at It’s Nice That; and neither is designer Evan Grothjan. While we admit we were initially drawn in by his vivid tones and abstract compositions, it turns out there’s a lot more to his Spaces series than crowd-pleasing aesthetics. Instead, the images form an ongoing investigation into the relationship between space and emotion; something Evan’s been interested in since studying animation as part of his Rhode Island School of Design course.